Obsession
by karebear
Summary: "All my doubts that fill my head are skidding up and down again." Fairly one-sided Fenris/mage Hawke rivalry not-exactly-romance.


Title: Obsession  
><span>Author<span>: karebear  
><span>Rating<span>: T  
><span>Characters<span>: Fenris, Hawke  
><span>Standard Disclaimer (Dragon Age)<span>: I don't own these characters or the world they inhabit. Bioware built the sandbox. I just play in it.  
><span>SummaryNotes: I honestly don't even know what to call this hot mess of a relationship. Incredibly fucked up friendship? One sided rivalry romance? Both? Yeah, both. Let's go with that.

* * *

><p><em>"Drinking wine and thinking bliss is on the other side of this<em>  
><em>I just need a compass and a willing accomplice<em>  
><em>All the doubts that fill my head are skidding up and down again."<em>  
>- Pink, "Cracks in the Crystal Ball"<p>

Every instinct that lives inside of him is screaming that he cannot trust her.

She is a _mage_, no different than Danarius or Hadriana or any of the _dozens_ of magisters that he has _personally_ seen torture and kill innocent people (most of them loyal slaves, people who had served them for years if not decades, and he is honestly not sure if this makes it better or worse) to get at their blood, to fuel their own ambition.

The lyrium burning through his flesh is all the reminder he will _ever_ need of what they can do.

But... Hawke is different. (Is she? Is she _really?_ Or is it just that she'd grown up hiding her power from Templars in Ferelden instead of leeching the life force from _people like him_ to increase it in Tevinter?)

When she shows up at his house, the smart thing to do would be to slam the door in her face (And why is he even still _here?_ What's in Kirkwall that he can't get _anywhere_ else?), but instead he invites her in and pulls out the Tevinter wine and _pours it for her_ (Why would he do that, _ever?_ Habit? What is _wrong_ with him?)

She sips the wine and watches him over the top of the glass, and _her eyes are following him_ and he can't shake it off and she came over here to see if he needed anything, she offers to help him even though he never asked her to, she gives him _gifts_ (_Why?_ What's her game? What does she _want_ from him?)

She insists on helping him learn to read, and he regrets ever letting it slip that he didn't know how, because she won't let it drop, and it forces him to admit that she's a surprisingly good teacher ("I used to help Carver and Bethany all the time." Why does he care? Why does he remember _everything_ she says to him? Why should he feel bad about her broken family? He doesn't even _have_ a family.)

And he follows her.

To every corner of Kirkwall and through the parts of the city he'd never had any desire to visit.

And farther than that, all over the Maker-forsaken Free Marches in the miserable heat and the rain and the cold, tramping through the dark and the dirt, in the middle of the night, it doesn't matter. She asks him and he'll go.

To the Bone Pit, the Dalish camp on Sundermount, through spider infested tunnels and against the Qunari.

And into the caves on the Wounded Coast.

When the hunters catch up with him again (after _years_, a part of him had hoped they'd given up, but he'd known better), she's the one that's by his side, and when he snaps the neck of the one who'd been leading them she doesn't even bat an eyelash, and when he sets off into the caverns to hunt Hadriana down for the last time, she's right behind him.

He has Hadriana in his grasp, _he can't believe her, she's lying, she has to be, and even if she isn't, it doesn't matter, it_ can't _matter, not when he's been waiting for this for so long_. He'd fantasized about it to get him through the long nights _freezing, starving, broken and bleeding, entirely at her mercy_. She'd gotten her rocks off that way, tormenting him, playing with him, _like a game, like a toy, she could do whatever she wanted to him and she knew it_ and Danarius never cared as long as she didn't cause permanent damage, and when you've got access to magic the definition of "permanent" can stretch pretty far anyway.

Hadriana looks at Hawke and begs her to stop him.

But she doesn't.

And he isn't sure whether he's grateful for the fact that she doesn't try to force him into doing the right thing, because she understands his need for vengeance, or if it _disappoints him, makes him even more angry with her,_ because doesn't that mean she's exactly as bloodthirsty as he's always accused her of being?

But what does that make him?

And he swears _her eyes are accusing him or is he just imagining it, does that matter? _Why does he _care_ what Hawke thinks about him, why is trying to_ prove himself to her?_ _She's still a mage, he's still a slave_, they do not have anything in common, _why won't she leave him alone?_

He runs away, ignores her, doesn't answer the door, pushes her away with all the force he can summon from the bottomless well of anger and hurt and mistrust inside of him (So then why is he angry when he sees her with Anders, of course they belong together, why should he be surprised that she would go to the abomination, _she's no different then he is_, not inside.)

He could go, now's his chance, _there is nothing tying him here, she's left him behind, he told her to_.

But he won't leave, he can't leave her.

Even if he did, she'd follow him. He already knows he'd never be able to get her out of his head.

She stops checking up on him, he's convinced himself that he's stopped wanting her to, but when he asks her to come, after not talking to her for_ months, for years_, she does. Immediately, without question. _What does that mean?_

He hadn't told her about what he'd done, following up on the information about his possible sister (And why does he feel guilty about that? Why _should_ he have told her?)

But he can't trust his own judgement and he needs her to tell him what to do (Really? _Really?_ He risked his life to get out of Tevinter, to break away from Danarius' grasp, crossed the world, as far as he could run, _killed_ to keep himself free, and now he's _voluntarily enslaving himself to another mage._) This could be a trap (of course it is, he_ knows it is, so why is he walking into it?_) and he wants her at his back.

Every instinct that lives inside of him is screaming that _he has to trust her._

"I need you, Hawke. I don't have anyone else."


End file.
